OK, now that the Yankees have agreed to terms with Carlos Beltran, The Post finally has deciphered this team’s offseason strategy:
Go overboard for everyone besides Robinson Cano.
An epic Hot Stove work shift concluded Friday with the Yankees bringing the future Hall of Famer Beltran on board for three years and $45 million, just hours after Cano bolted for Seattle — getting a reported 10-year, $240-million contract — and Curtis Granderson stayed in town with the Mets for four years and $60 million. Oh, and Hiroki Kuroda came back for a year and $16 million.
The Yankees held the line at two years with Beltran … until they didn’t. They gave five years and $85 million to Brian McCann, a catcher who will turn 30 in February. They gave a mind-blowing seven years and $153 million to Jacoby Ellsbury, the injury-prone, power-deficient center fielder whom the Red Sox offered just five years and $80 million to stay in Boston.
But to Cano, a durable, powerful, middle-of-the-field, homegrown Yankee? The club held the line at seven years and $175 million, leading to arguably the most stunning player divorce in Yankees history. What other player has left this franchise at the industry peak as Cano just did?
The Yankees’ offer to Cano can be considered fair, all the more so since only the unthreatening Mariners exceeded it to our knowledge. However, when you consider Cano’s value and status, the offer is not commensurate with the above-and-beyond efforts the Yankees expended to import Beltran, Ellsbury and McCann.
Cano, the Yankees are convinced, was going to chase every last penny. That even if they had increased their package to eight years and $200 million, the second baseman still would have joined Felix Hernandez in the Pacific Northwest.
Could be. Wouldn’t have hurt to try, though. To make Cano choose between astronomical packages while still falling two years and $40 million short of the Mariners’ effort (and sure, Seattle could have gone even higher). A player of Cano’s caliber in free agency should expect his contract to start with a 2.
In conjunction with that, the most confusing element of this whole saga is how closely the Yankees valuated Cano with Ellsbury, an injury-prone talent whose own team didn’t work very hard to retain him.
The Yankees’ take is that, having been burned to a crisp by their 10-year, $275-million investment in Alex Rodriguez, they simply weren’t comfortable going beyond seven years for Cano — and they paid a premium to sign Ellsbury quickly once they became convinced Cano was leaving, in order to avoid losing out on a player they really liked.
Eh. When the agreement with Ellsbury became public, as of course it would, Cano had one more gripe with his longtime employers. One more reason to bolt.
Just as the Red Sox’s mild interest in retaining Ellsbury raises your eyebrows, the Yankees’ acceptable but not extraordinary efforts to keep Cano makes you wonder how badly they really wanted the second baseman. Were they worried Cano’s association with Jay Z would steer his focus away from the field and more towards branding and endorsements? Does Cano’s friendship with illegal performance-enhancing drug users Rodriguez and Melky Cabrera unnerve them? Did they feel emboldened by the significant, loud contingent of Yankees fans who felt no love for Cano because of his annoying but largely irrelevant habit of not running out hits?
Maybe time will prove the Yankees right — and to reiterate, I’m not advocating they should have matched the Mariners’ offer. However, if we’re talking about reliable commodities, none of the newest Yankees can touch Cano.
At day’s end, we have a Pyrrhic victory for Cano, who blew up his legacy with the most famous team in sports in order to join a franchise that has never even qualified for a World Series, let alone won a title. It’s a modest win for Jay Z, who, in his maiden voyage as a baseball agent, at least proved that he could find the proverbial “one dumb owner,” and hey: Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro Suzuki and A-Rod all established brands in Seattle. You know Jay Z wanted to get this sort of a deal while keeping Cano in pinstripes.
For the Yankees, it’s a chance to spread their resources, although they’re getting perilously close to their $189 million luxury-tax threshold. They really need Fredric Horowitz to uphold the bulk of Rodriguez’s 211-game suspension, and with their outfield stacked, a trade of Brett Gardner or Alfonso Soriano appears feasible.
This has been a thrilling Yankees winter, and there’s more to come. Yet for all of the big names they’re importing, this is still a roster loaded with questions. They no longer have their most certain answer, and they don’t seem particularly perturbed by that.